My second entry to a competition by @its_aves - join in if you have a passion for writing! The story is in Notes and Credits. I know I'm more of a poet on Scratch but I thought I'd give a short story a go. Please review and give me feedback with which to improve. Wish me luck! By the way, if anyone cares, the narrator is called Eleanor Lionheart and is female.
Where am I? The last thing I remember was running. Running, amid thousands of panicked screams and the odd reverberating shockwave from yet another explosion. But that’s about it. However, the first thing I remember was a muffled sort of silence, a thick weight gently pressing in on me. My eyelids were so heavy that it was a great effort to open them. When I did, it gave me no answers. Where am I? The sunlight’s rays sliced the space before me, yet it was tinged with a soft blue. The space around me was so open, so unrestricted, but emanated a sense of loneliness. The surface against my back was rough, but soft, comforting. I sat up, my vision blurry, my body aching with wounds that I didn’t remember sustaining. The rocky ledge I found myself upon was coated in softly dancing leaves, swaying gently in a current. A current? I looked around once more. Though I felt nothing to do with my eyes that could be hindering my vision, the scene before me still was tantalisingly blurry, as if hiding secrets from me. Then I felt it as I tried putting my hands to my face. A bubble. A breathing device. And that’s when it clicked in my brain. I was underwater. In a world that I didn’t know. Where am I? Where did I come from? And where was everything I knew? * I looked around me, my brain like a relentless hurricane of question after question, pounding like the wings of an eagle taking off. I rested the bubble encasing my head in my hands and tried to work things out. How could I, though, when I didn’t even know what I was meant to be working out? All I could see to give any hint was a pathetic, limp ribbon of seaweed drifting past, jagged fists of coral encircling me and a golden glint of something metallic that had caught the rays of sun. What was that? I experimented with moving my limbs, and though protesting and aching the whole time, I used them to push myself against the gentle current and investigate. The mysterious metallic object was almost completely concealed beneath a grainy blanket of sand, but I wrapped my hands around the exposed part and tugged, expecting a huge effort. I promptly fell over – I had used far more force than necessary. However, I had succeeded and the object was firmly in my grasp. As I lay on my back, my head pounding, I tried to work out what it was by its feel – cool, a light sort of heavy and smooth as a mirror. I couldn’t work it out, and curiosity grabbed me by the head and dragged me upright. It was a sword. Mighty, pristine and the hilt encrusted with rubies. It was a sword. And the most confusing part of this sword was that I recognised it. * The running. The explosions. The screams. I remembered so clearly then. This sword. The sword in my hands had been in my hands before. We had been at war. A war that had demolished everything I ever knew and replaced it with fear, devastation and loss. A war that I tried to fight in, but was so ashamed of myself when the enemy overwhelmed our beautiful little village. And as the memories came rushing back, other golden weapons, as if conjured by my thoughts, caught the corner of my eye, blurred not only by the bubble, but the beads of tears blossoming. A bow. An axe. A shining spear. But wait. If these weapons were here... Where was everything else? Where was whatever remained of my village? Where were the rest of the things I knew? I kept swimming, my pain driving me forwards, eventually finding a golden sheath that I could tie around my waist. I slotted the sword into it and the lump of metal pressing against my side felt so familiar, it was as if the memories attached to it was calling my name but remained tantalisingly out of reach. I matched the pace of the current, moving excruciatingly slow, but at least my speed (or rather, my lack of) gave me plenty of time to gather up the clues in my head, hoping I would eventually be able to weave them together. A deep crater. The odd skull. Upset sand wherever I turned. Even a horse harness. But none of these things answered many of my questions. Until I saw something in the distance, a smudge of darkness against the endless sapphire blue. I dismissed any glint at the corner of my eye, now laser-focussed on reaching my goal. Even the tears momentarily stopped falling as if they, too, were wondering. Spurred on by my curiosity, I swam with lengthy strokes and propelled myself through the water at a rate I didn’t believe possible. But as soon as my eyes could make out what the dark smudges actually were, I stopped dead in my tracks. A horrible sick feeling, a concoction of dread and disbelief, seeped through my bones. For, if I wasn’t mistaken, my eyes now lay upon my village. Or, more accurately, what was left of it.
